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I guess my plan is not so bad after all. At least this article at GameLife proves my point perfectly: first learn all the important stuff about producing a game at a big studio, probably failing miserably a few times along the way – and then actually founding your own little studio to produce the games you really want to do – just as Jamie Cheng (Shank), Jake Kazdal (Skulls of the Shogun) and Sean Murray (Joe Danger) did.

Choice quotes from the article:

The stereotypical image of an indie gamemaker is an iconoclast who prizes art over commerce, or perhaps a kid with no formal training working in his parents’ house, cobbling together a genius new game idea using pirated software and raw talent.

But that’s not what the new crop of indies are. They’re veterans of the triple-A game biz with decades of experience behind them. They’ve worked for the biggest companies and had a hand in some of the industry’s biggest blockbusters. They could work on anything, but they’ve found creative fulfillment splitting off into a tiny crew and doing their own thing. They’re using everything they’ve learned working on big-budget epics and applying it to small, downloadable games.

The good news for gamers is that, as the industry’s top talents depart the big studios and go into business for themselves, players are being treated to a new class of indie game. They’re smaller and carry cheaper price tags, but they’re produced by industry veterans instead of thrown together by B teams and interns. Most importantly, unlike big-budget games that need to appeal to the lowest common denominator to turn a profit, these indie gems reveal the undiluted creative vision of their makers. [...]

It’s not just about the final product, Cheng says, it’s about the process. Working in a smaller group brings out the best in creative people, he says, because “you wear more hats, you get to do more things.”

“Everyone’s more involved,” he says. “When the company gets larger, there’s pressure to put people into boxes. That’s not fulfilling for people. That’s not how they’re going to eventually do their best.” [...]

As tempting as the indie life might be, Kazdal brings up the catch: It wouldn’t be possible for three people to create a game of such high quality without spending decades in the trenches first.

“I definitely wouldn’t be in this situation if it wasn’t for the 10 or 15 years that I’ve been doing game design,” he says. “We’re all veterans at this point and we’ve learned the hard lessons of game development at the big companies. I wouldn’t say to you just coming out of college that you shouldn’t go get a job at a real studio.”

“Indies will quite often paint a bad picture of working in the industry, or maybe that you’re tainted for doing it or whatever. For us, I got to work with some amazingly talented people at Criterion. That’s such a beneficial thing,” Murray says.

But Murray has some words of caution for those working on big-budget games.

“You get into this mentality that it takes 50 people to do anything. When people say, ‘Should I work in the industry first?,’ I say they should. But if you want to do your own thing, you need to keep that alive, because it can become very hard to break away.”

Emphasis all mine. And I am confident that I am on the right track.

Apart from that personal stuff, this development also means that we will have more and more auteur games in the future: Games that follow one artist's vision, compared to the usual one-size-fits-all productions that most of the triple-A games are.

I see a golden age of gaming coming up.

Or at least the next golden age.